Researchers have successfully grown and then multiplied human hair follicles in the lab, showing that one follicle can turn into many. Baldness eventually affects about four in five men, and while there are treatments there is currently no cure.

Transcript

TONY EASTLEY: For the first time, researchers say they've successfully grown and then multiplied human hair follicles in the lab, showing that one follicle can turn into many.

Baldness eventually affects about four in five men, and while there are treatments, there is currently no cure.

The new process involved growing altered human cells within the tissue of circumcised foreskins from babies, then grafting the concoction onto the backs of mice.

Will Ockenden spoke to one of the study's authors, Professor Colin Jahoda from Durham University.

COLIN JAHODA: We've taken a bit of tissue from hair follicles. We've taken the cells and multiplied them in culture and then shown that we can, if we put them back at a small sphere, a ball, we can then put them back into human skin and they'll start new hair follicles growing.

What existed before is basically the transfer of one follicle to another place. It was just moving about, if you like. What we've done differently here is taken a small bit of the follicle, small bit of tissue, multiplying out the cells in that tissue. But when you put that into the skin, that structure interacts with the environment and creates a new, completely new, follicle.

WILL OCKENDEN: So do you get more hair growth than you otherwise would?

COLIN JAHODA: It's a proof of principle that you can start off with a small amount of tissue and multiply up.

WILL OCKENDEN: And why did you use neonatal foreskin?

COLIN JAHODA: Just 'cause that's the most, actually the most commonly used skin in a lot of dermatological activities. So for example, the skins that are made for skin replacement when people, for burns patients and things, they're often based on a neonatal skin because of its availability and its use.

WILL OCKENDEN: So the foreskins from babies. Where do you get them?

COLIN JAHODA: A lot of the work we've done in Columbia University in New York, and they routinely get foreskins from circumcisions.

WILL OCKENDEN: Can you buy it? Is there a market for that kind of thing?

COLIN JAHODA: There's not a market as such, but many of the, you know, the companies that are making skin and things, though people don't know it, a lot of the cells that are used will come from that source.

WILL OCKENDEN: What hope do you have that this will be, I guess, a cure for people who do suffer from baldness?

COLIN JAHODA: For me it's more of a proof of principle thing in the sense that someone had to show that we could do this multiplication step. The next stage is really to, you know, cosmetically, people are only going to be happy with a follicle that grows hair that's the right length, the right colour, grows in the right direction etc, so you know there's a whole secondary step that has to be taken.

Some of them are almost kind of almost engineering problems that are not really my science. But what it will do is it will spark a lot of interest and people that are trying to do this kind of thing to take it forward, I think.

WILL OCKENDEN: So people who are suffering may have to wait a bit longer?